Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

Alabama House Passes 4 Abortion Measures, Including 6-week Abortion Ban

Incredibly, the 6-week ban passed the house 73-29:

WSFA:  Alabama House passes 4 abortion bills:

Four abortion bills are headed to the Alabama Senate after being approved by the Alabama House of Representatives Tuesday.

House representatives voted to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. A fetal heartbeat can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Both sides of the abortion debate agree the proposal could end up banning most abortions. . . .

SCOTUSblog's Contraceptive Mandate Symposium Addresses Hobby Lobby and Corporate Religious Refusals

SCOTUSblog: Accomodations, Religious Freedom, and the Hobby Lobby Case, by Rick Garnett:

Every law student learns and every lawyer knows that there is more to “doing law” than simply looking up or even arguing for the right answers.  It also involves identifying the questions that need answering.  This is one reason why law-school examinations so often ask students to “spot the issues” that are presented, or hidden, in complicated and sometimes bizarre hypotheticals, stories, and narratives. . . .

SCOTUSblog: Under a Straight-forward Reading of Constitutional Text and History and Fundamentals of Corportate Law, Hobby Lobby's Claims Fails, by Elizabeth Wydra:

Superstar Supreme Court lawyer Paul Clement starts his brief on behalf of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., and its individual owners, the Green family, with a rather remarkable assertion: that this case “is one of the most straight-forward violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”  Someone like Clement can get away with breaking one of the basic rules of legal advocacy – one is generally not supposed to tell the Court that it is reviewing “an easy case,” since such a legal cakewalk probably wouldn’t require the rare attention of the High Court.  But Clement’s assertion is nonetheless wrong.  To the contrary, it’s — dare I say — easy to show that this case is far from easy for Hobby Lobby to win. . . . 

SCOTUSblog: Mandates Make Martyrs Out of Corporate Owners, by Ilya Shapiro:

Should some people be exempt from laws that generally apply to everyone but infringe on sincerely held religious beliefs? If so, doesn’t that privilege believers over nonbelievers, and indeed pick and choose among religious tenets to determine which merit accommodation? Does it matter if the religious belief in question relates strictly to worship or is tied to an otherwise secular mission, such as the provision of education or social-welfare services? What about commercial activity, and do the legal forms in which that activity is pursued matter? These are some of the thorny questions that arise when a pluralistic society tries to reconcile the rule of law with religious liberty. . . .

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Other pieces in the symposium can be accessed here.

More Opinion on Hobby Lobby and the Vetoed Arizona Bill

The New York Times - opinion column: Arizona Did Us All a Favor, by Timothy Egan:

YOU’RE a fundamentalist Mormon — that is, the breakaway sect, not recognized by the main church, with a scary compound in Northern Arizona. Women wear long prairie dresses, men rule with an iron fist. You believe in a host of things that violate civil and even criminal law. But your beliefs are “sincerely held.” They come directly from God.

Until Gov. Jan Brewer joined the avalanche of sanity and vetoed Arizona’s so-called religious liberty bill, you may have found some protection in the law. The bill was a green light for bigotry. And indeed, the measure gave those with “sincerely held” religious beliefs the right to refuse service to perceived sinners.

But if you drill down on the logic that all but three of the state’s House Republican legislators tried to enshrine into law, you see a very un-American tenet at work — far beyond the implications for gays and lesbians. You can follow this strain of reasoning up to a pivotal case that will be heard later this month by the Supreme Court. . . .

NPR Examines What's Behind the Push to Enact a Near-Total Abortion Ban in Spain

NPR - Parallels blog: Anti-Abortion Push Has Spain Debating Definition Of 'Progress,' by Lauren Frayer:

. . . The Spanish government is on its way to creating one of the toughest abortion laws in Europe — a near-total ban, except in cases of rape or grave risk to the mother's health. Serious birth defects will no longer be grounds for terminating a pregnancy.

In Europe, only the tiny island nation of Malta has a complete ban on abortion. . . .

Listen to the story here.

If the Arizona Anti-Gay Bill Is Unacceptable, Why Should Corporations Be Given a License to Discriminate Against Women by Refusing to Comply with the Contraceptive Coverage Rule?

If the Supreme Court Justices need a real-life example of the slippery slope they are in danger of inviting by allowing corporations to refuse, on religious grounds, to comply with the contraception rule under the Affordable Care Act, they need look no further than Arizona.

The Huffington Post - The Blog:  What Do Arizona's Anti-LGBT Bill and the Supreme Court Birth Control Cases Have in Common? They're Not About Religious Liberty, by Cecile Richards:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was right to veto an extreme bill that would have allowed companies to refuse service to a wide range of people. This bill was absolutely unacceptable -- and people all over the country and across the political spectrum breathed a sigh of relief when Brewer stopped it from becoming law.

The personal beliefs of any business owner should not give them a free pass to discriminate against anyone -- whether it's lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender patrons who want to shop at their store or female employees who are legally entitled to birth control coverage under the law.

But this didn't start with Arizona, and it won't end with Arizona. This most recent legislation is part of an orchestrated and radical effort to extend religious liberties to corporations -- to treat private businesses like churches under the law, by giving them the right to refuse services, deny health care coverage, and discriminate against people. . . .

Study Finds that Men's "Biological Clock" Means Higher Risk of Mental Illness in Children Born to Older Fathers

The New York Times:  Mental Illness Risk Higher for Children of Older Fathers, Study Finds, by Benedict Carey:

Children born to middle-aged men are more likely than those born to younger fathers to develop any of a range of mental difficulties, including attention deficits, bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia, according to the most comprehensive study to date of paternal age and offspring mental health. . . . 

. . . Men have a biological clock of sorts because of random mutations in sperm over time, the report suggests, and the risks associated with later fatherhood may be higher than previously thought. The findings were published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. . . . 

Study Verifies Reliability of DNA Test for Fetal Genetic Disorders

The Los Angeles Times: Study calls DNA test reliable in discovering fetal disorders, by Monte Morin:

The screening more accurately identifies likely cases of genetic disorders caused by extra chromosomes, like Down syndrome, in a study of low-risk pregnant women.

It's billed as a faster, safer and more accurate way of screening expectant mothers for fetal abnormalities like Down syndrome, and proponents say it has already become the standard for prenatal care.

But as a handful of California companies market their DNA-testing services to a growing number of pregnant women, some experts complain that the tests have not been proven effective in the kind of rigorous clinical trials that are required of new drugs.

Now, a study published Wednesday by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has verified that one of the tests can identify likely cases of Down syndrome and other genetic disorders caused by extra chromosomes in low-risk women with greater reliability than traditional noninvasive screening methods. . . .

Gov. Brewer Vetoes Offensive Arizona Bill Sanctioning Discrimination Against Gays and Lesbians, But Abortion Seen as Fair Game

The New York Times: Day After Governor’s Veto, Arizona Takes Up Abortion Clinics, by Fernanda Santos:

A day after being reprimanded by Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, for failing to heed her call for action on the budget and the state’s child welfare agency, Arizona’s Republican-led House of Representatives promptly took up a new piece of social legislation on Thursday that would permit the surprise inspection of abortion clinics in the state.

The measure, which would also require the clinics to report “whenever an infant is born alive after a botched abortion,” was championed by the Center for Arizona Policy, the same powerful Evangelical Christian group that pushed a bill Ms. Brewer vetoed on Wednesday  that would have made it easier for businesses to refuse service to gay men, lesbians and other people on religious grounds. . . . 

The New York Times -- opinion column: Arizona Sort of Helps Out, by Gail Collins: 

It’s been quite a week in Arizona. First, the Legislature passed a bill that, in effect, gave businesses the right to discriminate against gay couples. The state’s actual business community was horrified. Everybody from Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich was ticked off.

Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill, pointing out acerbically that the lawmakers had not managed to send her anything whatsoever on critical issues — like, say, the budget — while they labored with remarkable efficiency on behalf of theologically troubled wedding photographers.

Chastened, the very same elected officials trotted back to their posts and immediately took up the subject of surprise inspections of abortion clinics. . . .